Twenty-Seven Bones

3

Standing in the rain outside the cave entrance, Lewis and Emily went through one more round of Alphonse and Gaston before Lewis acceded to her demand that he go first. He didn’t think she knew about the grenades, but he didn’t want to take the chance of inflaming her suspicions. And his options were limited-if he killed her then and there, he might not have time to uncork and heave the grenades before Phil or Bennie came out to investigate the sound of the gunshot.

He pocketed his gun, started down the tunnel on his hands and knees, flashlight bumping the ground as he crawled. What he saw encouraged him: the floor of the tunnel was solid rock, as he’d remembered, but the walls and ceiling were boulders and dirt, with roots showing through in places. It certainly looked as if a grenade would bring it down-the hard part was going to be preventing the grenade from rolling all the way down the slope and exploding in the first chamber instead of sealing the tunnel. Have to either hold it a couple seconds or roll it slow. Or maybe blow them all to hell with the first grenade, then leave the second near the mouth of the tunnel and run lak fuck.

Lewis emerged into the first chamber. Reflected by the shiny black wall, helmet lamps and flashlights illuminated the sandy floor, the dragon’s-tooth stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Pender and the girl were to the left of the tunnel opening, sitting with their backs against the wall. Bennie was holding the gun on them. Phil and Bennie had taken off their backpacks. Phil was digging through his trying to find something with which to tie up Pender. They were all still dripping wet.

Emily emerged from the bottom of the tunnel, pushing her backpack ahead of her. She stood up, stretched to her full five feet three inches, arched her spine, pressed her thumbs against the small of her aching back.

“Did you bring some rope?” Phil asked her.

“I wasn’t planning to have to tie up anybody.”

“Neither was I,” said Phil quickly, flashing her a meaningful spouse-to-spouse warning glare. Apgard didn’t know he’d snatched the girl on purpose, much less why. Probably wouldn’t approve, either. Most people wouldn’t-then again, most people weren’t as free from societal constraints as the Drs. Epp. “Didn’t we leave some rope in the cross chamber last time?”

“I think we did. Bennie?”

Bennie half turned. Pender, who’d been waiting for his chance, launched himself upward, diving for the gun. His foot slipped on the sand. Bennie sidestepped nimbly, pistol-whipped Pender once across the back of his already battered skull as he came flailing by, and again as he fell unconscious to the cave floor, bleeding profusely from a nasty scalp laceration.

Phil had to laugh. “Guess we won’t be needing that rope after all,” he said.

“He’s still breathing,” said Emily, pointedly.

It took Phil a second-then he realized what she was hinting at. After all, he had the little girl’s dying breath to look forward to. Might as well tie Pender up in case he regained consciousness, keep him around for Emily. She’d always liked the big strong ones. “I’ll go get those ropes.”

“I’ll help you.”

“Don’t bother, I-”

Emily gave him a meaningful spouse-to-spouse glare of her own. “I said, I’ll help you.” She had a few things she wanted to talk over privately-such as, how far did he think they could trust Apgard? She had gotten some pretty hinky vibes off him out there-it wasn’t hard to tell he didn’t approve of their taking the girl.

So after instructing Bennie in Indonesian to keep Apgard there, Emily switched on her headlamp again, followed Phil down the first winding passage, and caught up to him in the second chamber. They picked their way around the obstacle course of purple traffic cone stalagmites, and were halfway down the slightly narrower second passageway-the white walls of the third chamber had just appeared in the beam of their headlamps-when they heard the explosion behind them.